Defying Moscow's warnings, NATO states seek to build ‘drone wall’ along Russian border

 

Six members of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) have called for a "drone wall" along their borders with Russia, despite Moscow's warnings against the hostile activities of the military bloc along its borders.

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Finland and Norway have agreed to build a unified “drone wall” defense system along their borders with Russia and Belarus.

Interior ministers of the six NATO countries met last week in Riga the capital city of Latvia, a former Soviet republic that is now a member of NATO and the European Union, to discuss ways of coordinating their defense capabilities.

“We see constant efforts” from Russia and Belarus to “destabilize our countries’ internal security and public order, to create panic and distrust in institutions,” Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said in a press release on Friday.

Bilotaite accused Minsk and Moscow of “weaponizing migration, cyber-attacks, disinformation, sabotage of critical infrastructure and other hybrid threats.”

“We need to think about evacuating the population on a regional scale, as well as securing the EU’s external borders with drones,” Bilotaite stated.

The proposed “drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland” would protect borders not “only with physical infrastructure, surveillance systems, but also with drones and other technologies,” Bilotaite told the Baltic News Agency. She also proposed organizing joint mass evacuation drills at a regional level.

The press release said the interior ministers had also agreed to explore the possibility of financing joint defense efforts from European Union funding sources. Norway, however, is not a member of the European Union.

In the meantime, authorities in Latvia have called on residents to turn basements into air-raid shelters, with many in the Baltic country expressing concern they could be Russia's next target.

Riga's civil defense commission chief said, "The basements of public buildings, schools, retirement homes, hospitals, and town halls will be inspected by the authorities who will prepare them to serve as hiding places in the event of an attack."

Gints Reinsons told the TV24 station that the goal was to prepare a hundred anti-bomb shelters a month through the end of the year.

Riga's mayor told city residents to use Saturday's annual "Big Clean-up Day" to make their basements into anti-bomb shelters.

"We call on everyone during the big clean-up, but also afterwards, to ensure that your cellars and your basements can be used as shelters in case of emergencies," Vilnis Kirsis said in a communique that municipal employees would do the same for buildings belonging to the city.

Latvia shares a 214-kilometer border with Russia. The country's Prime Minister Evika Silina has compared Russia to an unpredictable drunkard posing a real threat to its neighbors.

However, Moscow rejects the myth of a Russian threat used by Western leaders to scare their people into funding the military-industrial complex.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly given assurance that the Russian nation “has no interest… geopolitically, economically or militarily” to justify waging war against NATO member states.